I Could Have Danced All Night
by Mary in the Stars
Summary: "The new girl in Miss Patty's class, Ivy, skips over to Kirk, who extends his hand and says, 'Hi, I'm Kirk Gleason and I love you.'" A collection of drabbles of Ivy/Kirk friendship separated into small sections. A Smash/Gilmore Girls crossover - COMPLETE
1. Chapter 1

A/N: For the sake of this story, let's pretend that Kirk is younger and closer to Ivy in age :) I do not own _Smash_ or _Gilmore Girls _and these characters are not mine.

* * *

**I Could Have Danced All Night**

Kirk Gleason has twelve brothers and sisters. With so many siblings and one parent, it's easy for him to disappear. So when he asks for dance lessons, his mom doesn't even bat an eye. He's seven when he enrolls in Miss Patty's School of Ballet.

**0o0o0**

Ivy Conroy has one brother with a learning disability. With her mom's career and his special school, it's easy for Ivy to disappear. Dance and voice lessons are her safe haven, and when she discovers she loves performing, Ivy begs her mom to take her to the best ballet school in the area (even if it's a good forty minutes away). She's six when she enrolls in Miss Patty's School of Ballet.

**0o0o0**

"Boy and girls, this is Ivy. She'll be joining us for ballet class," Miss Patty announces. A small girl with wavy yellow hair peeks out from behind the dance teacher's ample bottom. She has big eyes and pink nail polish on her fingers. "Ivy, hun, why don't you go stand with Kirky over there in the corner?"

The girl skips over to Kirk, who extends his hand and says, "Hi, I'm Kirk Gleason and I love you."

**0o0o0**

"Oh..." Well, this is a first. Though Ivy can't say she doesn't like it. Actually, it feels kind of good.

Ivy blushes. And even though the other girls are snickering, she takes his hand and shakes enthusiastically. "Nice to meet you, Kirk!"

**0o0o0**

"Girls and Kirk, your recital is in a week," Miss Patty says to the group of third-graders sitting cross-legged in a circle on the floor of the studio. "Dress rehearsal tomorrow. Bring your costumes and your makeup and be here at one, okay?"

"Oh, no, my mom has a show tomorrow!" Ivy whispers to Kirk.

Kirk sees his golden opportunity.

**0o0o0**

"Wanna sleep over at my house?" he whispers back. "You can sleep in my sisters' room. My mom won't even notice."

"Neither will mine," Ivy replies. She calls her dad from Kirk's house, and watches movies with Ariella, Serena, and Rachel all afternoon.

**0o0o0**

Kirk high-fives all his brothers. Score.

**0o0o0**

He pokes his head in the living room while they're watching a Shirley Temple movie. "You look like her," he says.

"I wish I _was_ her," Ivy says, eyes never leaving the TV screen.

"You can be! Wanna learn that stairs dance with me?"

His sisters leave the room with knowing looks in their eyes.

**0o0o0**

Kirk can actually sort of tap dance, as long as he stays away from those weird interpretive moves he does.

**0o0o0**

Kirk knows he can't dance. He's embarrassing himself. But seeing Ivy's face when they do the Shirley Temple routine on the steps of the Gazebo at the Spring Festival? Worth it.

**0o0o0**

Now that she's getting serious about her career, Ivy and her dad outvote her mother and she enrolls in tap and jazz in addition to ballet.

**0o0o0**

Kirk's decision to take tap and jazz has absolutely nothing to do with Ivy.

Or her bouncy hair.

Or her pretty eyes.

Really, it doesn't.


	2. Chapter 2

She's twelve when one day after ballet he blurts out, "I like you."

He's told her once before, but that was "I love you" and she was six. So even though the words shouldn't mean as much, they do.

He's weird, but he's also sweet and none of the other girls will acknowledge him, so...

"Thanks, Kirk," is all she can come up with right now.

They sit in silence, packing up their pointe shoes.

"Wanna get a burger?" he offers, like this is what they're supposed to do.

"Sure."

**0o0o0**

_It's totally not a date_. But Al's has decent food and her mom isn't picking her up for another hour.

**0o0o0**

She asks to share his fries. Best. Date. Ever.

**0o0o0**

Puberty hits Ivy like a freakin' freight train. Legs, ass, hips, boobs; all at once. Ballet leotards suck.

**0o0o0**

Puberty hits Kirk very, very slowly. For months he speaks in one- or two-word sentences, for fear or sounding like a drunken sailor. Ivy understands.

**0o0o0**

At fourteen, he uses said cracked voice to ask Ivy to Stars Hollow Middle School's winter dance. They're at Weston's, and Fran smiles from behind the counter like she's been waiting for Kirk to do that all year.

**0o0o0**

Ivy concentrates very hard on her hot chocolate. "I'm still the same, you know, even if I look like Marilyn Monroe now." She hopes she doesn't sound full of herself, but she's also trying to find out whether he's gay, which most of the boys she meets through performing arts are.

**0o0o0**

"I happen to think Marilyn Monroe was an extremely talented actress who understood her sexuality without being trampy and she also had a brilliant mind and was very pretty as are you."

**0o0o0**

Frankly, his answer leaves her undecided, with the Marilyn knowledge and all. But she accepts anyway.

**0o0o0**

Oh, _fine_, this one can count as a date.

**0o0o0**

Kirk's happy dance once Ivy drives off with her mom is probably the best routine he's ever done.

**0o0o0**

Luke Danes, on a coffee run for his dad, rolls his eyes. Wierdo.

**0o0o0**

Actually, she wasn't as reluctant to go to the dance as she thought.

**0o0o0**

Ivy squeezes into a dress her mom wore once to a luncheon. It's black with pink and green accents that make Ivy look like she's wrapped in an abstract painting. She tries some makeup too (and then a little more), though she doesn't know why she wants so badly to look nice. It's just Kirk, right?

**0o0o0**

Kirk wears dress pants and a shirt that pinches his neck. His older brothers decide he should ditch the bowtie, and he actually lets them help. He doesn't know _why_ he's letting them, though. It's just Ivy, right?

**0o0o0**

The dance is lame, but they have fun anyway. There's karaoke, so Ivy is covered.

**0o0o0**

Her performance is the highlight of the whole night. That, and when Carey Duncan kisses a very confused Luke Danes.

**0o0o0**

Kirk doesn't step on her feet. Best. Night. Ever.

**0o0o0**

They share a small kiss. Neither one feels the need to broadcast it.

**0o0o0**

Miss Patty can tell anyway.


	3. Chapter 3

The summer before Ivy starts at her performing arts high school, she goes to Stagedoor Manor in the Catskills. Kirk hates that he has no acting or musical ability. She's only there for two weeks, but it feels like a lot longer.

**0o0o0**

She calls him one night after lights out, and he sneaks the phone out of his house to talk on the front steps.

"I hate my mother," Ivy deadpans.

"Hey, me too!" he says, grinning, despite knowing very well she can't see it.

"I'm serious!" She lowers her voice when one of her roommates groans. "I'm serious. She won't even come to my show next week! She doesn't want to 'create a spectacle.' Little does she know her career's been at a standstill since I happened." Frustrated, she kicks at the ladder on her bunk bed and stubs her toe. "Ron Howard visited his daughters. Courtney Love visited her daughter!"

"You don't need Leigh Conroy to watch you perform. Introduce the audience to the new generation."

She rolls over in bed and contemplates this. "You're good at that; you know? Cheering people up."

He shrugs, though she can't see that either. "I take care of people. It's what I do."

**0o0o0**

Ivy returns a better performer, if that's possible. She's more confident and more career-driven, but she still has a special place in her heart for Stars Hollow. Plus, she spends all her down time talking to Kirk about camp. Almost worth it.

**0o0o0**

"I'll need a stage name," she says one day after class at Weston's. "For when I join Actor's Equity. Something that distances me from my mother."

"I think your middle name is really pretty," Kirk says. "Try it out."

Ivy nods and continues making plans.

**0o0o0**

Kirk doesn't know what he wants to be when he grows up; he'll probably just take care of his mother and do stuff that makes money. He doesn't mind, as long as he can still dance with a particular yellow-haired friend.

**0o0o0**

High school makes Ivy restless. Everyone tells her she belongs on Broadway, and her training makes her more anxious to get there.

**0o0o0**

Their regular hang-outs at Weston's have a little more distance between them now that she's in high school productions and getting swamped with homework and rehearsals.

**0o0o0**

Kirk hates Ivy's high school. Luke laughs.

**0o0o0**

Luke is caught making out with Crazy Carrie Duncan under the bleachers. Kirk laughs.

**0o0o0**

Ivy's sixteen when she comes to tap class in tears. Kirk is the first one at her side.

"I'm moving," she cries. "At the end of this year."

**0o0o0**

Kirk waits to get home to cry.


	4. Chapter 4

Ivy gets more excited to move as months go by. She'll be closer to her school, closer to New York... It's only a matter of time now. Connecticut is just too damn small.

**0o0o0**

Ivy is forced to drop ballet to be the lead in _Anything _Goes at her school. Kirk sees no reason to stay either.

**0o0o0**

Tap and jazz fly by. Her mind is always elsewhere, going over a different routine, to a different tune, in a different outfit.

Her heart is somewhere in a theatre bigger than Stars Hollow High auditorium.

**0o0o0**

Tap and jazz fly by. His mind is always elsewhere, usually at home, going over Mother's medication regimen or his little siblings' Little League schedules.

And her. His mind is usually on her.

**0o0o0**

Halfway into rehearsals, Ivy's voice gives out. The director and all he friends recommend prednisone. But when she starts seeing her vicious understudy in her bathroom mirror, she decides it was a bad idea.

**0o0o0**

Despite his laughing older siblings, annoying younger siblings, and his hovering mother, Kirk stays on the phone with Ivy all night.

**0o0o0**

Mother won't let him see Ivy's show. It's then that Kirk first thinks about moving out.

**0o0o0**

The cast party is like nothing Ivy's ever seen in Stars Hollow. Even if she doesn't live there, she has it's heart (for at least a little while longer). So when the male lead breaks out the booze and the bedroom door starts to close, she locks herself in the bathroom and calls Kirk.

**0o0o0**

KIRK GLEASON TO THE RESCUE.

**0o0o0**

She doesn't know why she called him instead of one of her girlfriends or her parents, but she's glad she did. They drive home, slowly and carefully, in his brother's broken-down Chevy. Oddly enough, his brother doesn't even mind.

**0o0o0**

Movie marathon sleepover at the Gleason house. Best. Night. Ever.

**0o0o0**

For both of them.


	5. Chapter 5

Four weeks until the move.

"We need a grand finale," Kirk tells Ivy over the phone. "Of us."

"Our recital already happened," she answers.

Kirk shushes his mom, who wants the phone back. "The Annual Dance Marathon is in three weeks. Let's enter!"

**0o0o0**

He had her at "forties clothes." And "competition."

**0o0o0**

And "us."

**0o0o0**

They practice for weeks, every day after class and on weekends. She buys a vintage red swing dress and he borrows a USO uniform from his grandfather.

**0o0o0**

Strangely, he looks less dorky than he should.

**0o0o0**

They sign in with Babette at at five in the morning on the day of the competition.

"Are you two a couple of cutie patooties! Hey Patty, aren't these two the cutest vintage couple you've ever seen in your life?"

Miss Patty rushes over to the embarrassed pair of teens. "Aw, if I hadn't taught you, you guys would win on adorability alone!"

Ivy signs hers and Kirk's names while the two women debate the existence of the word "adorability."

**0o0o0**

They both flush at being called a couple. Kirk shuffles his feet; Ivy concentrates very hard on her fingernails.

**0o0o0**

But they don't object, either.

**0o0o0**

24 hours of dancing. Why did he ever think he could last through _24 hours of dancing?_

**0o0o0**

Ivy cannot move anymore. Nope. Not gonna happen. Kirk's shoulder is awfully comfy.

**0o0o0**

Kirk holds her up, half-asleep. 24 hours of dancing? Eh, not so bad.

**0o0o0**

Their shameless happy dancing when they win might be making them a few enemies, but Ivy's moving in a week and Kirk really couldn't care less. He lets her keep the trophy. It's not like he'll forget this anyway.

**0o0o0**

She leaves on a Wednesday, after a final date at Weston's. They never discussed what they were, where they were going, or what would happen once she moved.

They didn't really need to. Best friends can be like that.


	6. Chapter 6

At first they talk on the phone every week, about school and dance lessons in their respective towns. But soon the distance between calls grows. Kirk's applying to community college; Ivy's auditioning for everything in sight.

**0o0o0**

He goes to community college in the fall, and all he can think of is how she's going to go _so much farther_.

**0o0o0**

"Kirk, I got a job!" Ivy squeals into the phone from her car.

"Pull over!"

"Fine, fine. You take such good care of me." She obediently pulls over on her way home from graduation practice. "But I got a job! I'm moving to New York to be in _Hairspray_!"

"That's great, Ivy!"

"I'm one of the Nicest Kids in Town."

"Well, duh."

**0o0o0**

She's only in the ensemble, but just getting cast right out of high school is unheard of. Plus, how long can she stay in the chorus, anyway?

**0o0o0**

He can't get to New York for opening night, but he sends her flowers.

And candy.

And a stuffed bear.

**0o0o0**

What? Ivy _likes_ flowers and candy and bears.

**0o0o0**

She goes on tour with the cast and can't afford long distance calls to Connecticut. Neither can he. They lose touch, each wrapped up in their careers. Her in theatre, he in odd jobs like swan salesman.

**0o0o0**

Years go by. Ivy meets Derek. Kirk meets his brother's ex-girlfriend, Lulu. He never tells her why he's so obsessed with the Dance Marathon.

**0o0o0**

The incident at _Heaven on Earth_ leaves Ivy lonely when surrounded by friends. But not _the_ friend. It finally occurs to her to, duh, _look him up on Facebook._

**0o0o0**

In Stars Hollow, there isn't really a need for Facebook when everyone you know lives within a five mile radius. But at his wife's insistence, he gets one anyway.

**0o0o0**

"**Ivy Lynn **sent you a Friend Request."

**0o0o0**

"**Kirk Gleason **accepted your Friend Request."

**0o0o0**

**The End**

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_Author's Note_

_I hope this story finds people well, and I hope that whoever reads this enjoys it. And reviews it :) I plan to write more within this universe, so be on the lookout. _


End file.
